To call the dancers' movements unabashed would be something of an understatement. Lecuona takes as its target all those nearly violent gestures that stand in for sex in movies of a certain age and temperament.

The girl who 'lovingly' piggybacks her beau, the despairing suitor who buries his face 'adoringly' in his lovely's skirts, the woman 'kittenishly' batting her lover's face... well, we know what that's all about, don't we?

Grupo Corpo are one of Brazil’s most successful contemporary dance ensembles. They use Afro-Brazilian dance moves with classical ballet to latin music.

O Corpo started their dance show with a sequence of flashing red lights as a background for 20 dancers dressed in black costumes performing the rather gymnastic choreography of Rodrigo Pederneiras to a recording of the pulsating music of Arnaldo Antunes.

There was much cheering at a packed Sadler’s Wells for the opening night of the Brazilian contemporary-dance company Grupo Corpo, and a lot of people had come determined to party. The most encouraging thing I can say of this troupe, founded 30 years ago and on a UK tour, is that its 22 dancers are attractive and full of stamina. My own stamina ran out long before the end of the first piece on this double bill, O Corpo — an interminable 42 minutes.

Fast and Sometimes Tricky Moves, Straight Out of Brazilby JOHN ROCKWELL for the New York Times

The choreography is distinctive. It is so high-energy that the occasional adagio moments come as a shock and a relief. It is basically modern dance, whatever that means today: barefoot or with ordinary shoes (flat, high-heeled), with lots of allusions to popular dance (Brazilian street dance, ballroom dance, African dance) and even to ballet. There is elegance here, but also deliberate dislocation: hips thrust out, women leaping suddenly into the arms of their partners and into tricky, sometimes scary-looking lifts.

Well, Grupo Corpo brought two contrasting works to BAM in Brooklyn, NYC: Lecuona, a ballroom-inspired series of duets, and Onqoto, a hybrid modern dance-Afro Brazilian concoction.

The former work showcased the company's agility and flawless technique -- they executed the most difficult lifts so elegantly that it's easy to forget how much effort it must take. However, I found the work tedious with my attention span beginning to wane aftet only half of the series of eight to ten duets. With all these talented dancers available, choreographer and artistic director Rodrigo Pederneiras could have used the talent pool in a more creative way.

While Lecouna exuded elegance, Onqoto was about the "Big Bang," or so the program notes claim but then again the notes was written so esoterically that one can't be too sure... Ultimately, the work represented a huge canvas that drew from modern dance, Afro-Brazilian rhythms, hip-hop and did I see some Broadway jazz moves too? Madonna would have been comfortable in this piece. Nevertheless, the crowd thoroughly enjoyed it. Rhythmic drumming can always get a crowd excited.

After seeing the O Corpo/Lecuona programme in Birmingham last year I bought the DVD as soon as I could. O Copro is a piece I feel that I will never get bored of, it's one of those unique works that come along once in a rare while which you know you'll never see anything like again.

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